Meet And Greet With Dalai Lama; To Enhance Sustainable Peace

Over the years, we have had different prepositions and plans to enhance peace and the concept of humanity. Different cultures have been seen to have different methodologies of dealing with conflict within the confines of the said culture. The aspect of globalization has become an ornamental factor that moves beyond the individual culture either defined by ethnicities and/or state boundaries. The need to find solutions to the challenges of global warming, unstable states, internationalized conflicts and even terrorism, have called for a global culture that will surpass the selfish nature of human beings to the selfless nature of humanity in general.

Peace builders from around the world having a discussion with His Holiness Dalai Lama in Daramsala India

He has been seen as a symbol of peace across the globe. Questions have been raised on how he has managed to deal with the conflicts and pressure at a personal level to result to his more Zen nature. Between the 29th of April to the 6th of May 2016, working with United States Institute of Peace and Generation change fellows from across 18 countries; Our director had an opportunity to visit India with a group of other individual from different regions and interact with not only the culture but also the great people. One outstanding individual was the 14th incarnation of His Holiness Dalai Lama. We spent a total of over 16 hours in two days having discussions on the challenges and the success of our work across the globe in relation to peace building.

His insights into the topic of peace building were remarkable. His Holiness taught us a lot and he led us into his life by stressing on the aspects of forgiveness. In addition, he noted that; “genuine human smile is the expression of the warm heart and trust.” He called on the youth leaders to be an example to the communities they serve and not be discriminatory in their work. In his explanation of how he has survived the challenges and pressures of life, he noted that; “the constant living in anger by humans is leading to limited hope and changing to detestation which makes life difficult.”

His Holiness challenged the youth leaders that though the world had a skewed view of power and strength, the truth was that; “Violence is a sign of weakness and that forgiveness was a sign of strength.” His message to all the participants was that of embrace and forgiveness to those who do wrong. The constant feeling of minimum achievement in our engagement was also highlighted in the discussions. Most of the participants were of the feeling that though they had invested a lot into the peace building efforts around the globe, there was still a need that was not being achieved. His Holiness Dalai Lama made it clear that; “we should always remember that as we work to achieve peace, we are a majority representing over 7 billion people in the world who like peace and the terrorists were the minority.”
He completed his discussions with a call to action for the peace builders. He reminded them that; “though the generation of the 20th century created a lot of problems for the world, it is the responsibility of the 21st century to resolve these problems.”